Hey! DH and I are currently TTC our first (fingers crossed!) and I'm really hoping to have a home birth (assuming all goes well). Has anyone had luck getting Blue Cross Blue Shield of MN to pay for any of the home birth costs? I sent their customer service a message, and they said traditional midwives are "ineligible providers", and I have NO idea what that means.. I haven't interviewed any midwives yet, but the midwives at Trillium really seem amazing. I'm wondering since Clare is a CNM I might have better luck getting stupid BCBS to pay. Alternatively, has anyone gotten one of our cities new birth centers to be covered? Thanks for any help!

Last year I got BCBS to cover some of my homebirth costs, but not all. I was seeing Erika Urban out of St. Peter, she is a licensed CPM, so I think having a license, which a CNM certainly would also, helps. Traditional midwives do not as far as I know. The key was in the coding. They wouldn't pay for the homebirth itself at all, but check your policy to see what coverage you have for pre-natal and post-natal care and get each of those visits individually coded as such, not under a general comprehensive care code. Most of the cost actually lies in those visits anyway-- since almost any midwife outside of a hospital is going to be out-of-network you won't get complete coverage even for any of those visits, but I got about 25% of all my midwife expense reimbursed in the end.

I would think that the birth centers would be covered. I am not sure about the Trillium midwives, but I bet if you call either one of them, they will let you know. I wouldn't be surprised they have more success because Claire is a CNM.

I think it depends more on your actual policy than you could find out from other people's experience. My BCBS says they will accept the universal filing codes and cover all of the homebirth. But yours is likely different than mine and whatever you do, get them to make NOTES on your FILE so when you call back again they have it in writing.